The Right of the Employee to an Invention Created in the Process of Labor Relations. (In Accordance With the Georgian - German Patent Legislation)

Creative activity, which ends with the creation of intellectual property objects, are mostly carried out by individuals employed in various private sectors or scientists working in higher education/research institutions. Therefore, the question who is the owner of the intellectual property object (invention), employee/inventor, whose direct participation with and usage of intellectual labor, the object was created by, or the employer, whose material technical base, experience and the other resources were used to create the invention, does not lose relevance. Georgia belongs to the continental, i.e. Romano-Germanic legal system. Modern Georgian intellectual property law has undergone a very interesting path of development since the restoration of independence. It should be noted that Georgia is the first country from the former Soviet republics to establish a national patent agency in 1992 (12,246). In this article, the authors focus on the basic regulations of Georgian and German patent law that regulate the ownership of an invention created by employees. As it is known, in Georgia the issue is resolved by the „Patent Law“, while in Germany, in addition to the patent law, there is an „Employee Inventions Act“. The scientific article consists of an introduction, a main part and a conclusion. The introduction presents the urgency of the legal problem. The main part, on the one hand, discusses the legal status of inventions created by employees, gives the relationship between patent law and labor law on this issue (on the example of Georgian legislation) and, on the other hand, the authors analyze the German ,,Employee Inventions Act“, which we find a detailed arrangement of an issue of interest to us in. The law is structured in such a way that the balance between the interests of the employee and the employer is maximally maintained, the rule of compensation is provided, a distinction is made between service and free inventions, and ways of resolving disputes between the parties are provided. The legal basis for arbitration is in the foreground. There is also a court of law under the jurisdiction of which these disputes are considered.

Alternative Systems

The idea of precompression of the cylinder charge air is as old as the internal combustion itself. It is generally accepted that the first supercharger design in the modern sense was actually a turbocharger, patented in 1905 by the Swiss engineer Alfred Büchi (1879-1959). It comprised an axial compressor, an aftercooler and an exhaust gas turbine applied to a radial piston-cylinder engine as shown in the German patent drawings in Figure 8-1. Not surprisingly, it took him more than two decades to make the system work due to low component efficiencies, i.e., the problem that bedeviled all early gas turbine inventors due to the insufficient knowledge of aerodynamics.

Die Aufbrauchfrist im Patentverletzungsprozess

For the first time, this work deals comprehensively with the legal institution of a grace period in patent infringement proceedings. By granting such a grace period, the automatic injunction in accordance with Sec. 139 (1) of the German Patent Act can be limited temporally in case of disproportionality. The case groups of complex products, ambush situations and legitimate interests of third parties are particularly relevant in this context. After a detailed examination of these case constellations and of the grace period in general, the author presents an independent solution in which he advocates an extended application of the grace period.

No Need for ‘Plausibility’ in German Patent Law

In the case law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO), increasing importance is being attached to the concept of ‘plausibility’, which, however, has no literal basis in the EPC. Nevertheless, many decisions in which inventive step (Art. 56 EPC) is assessed address the question of whether the claimed solution was at least ‘plausible’ at the effective date. For medical use claims, a ‘plausibility test’ is even performed for assessing sufficiency of disclosure (Art. 83 EPC). Starting from this example, the following article shows why German patent law does not need ‘plausibility’.

Products, Patents, Proportionality – How German Patent Law Responds to 21st Century Challenges

German patent law faces challenges in trying to accommodate a changing technological and economic reality. As a result, recent legislative initiatives have been dominated by discussions about adjusting the German Patent Act, especially with regard to the claim for an injunction. This article gives a brief overview of these new challenges as well as the legal background of injunctions in German patent law and the underlying case law. It also evaluates the proposed amendment of the provision on injunctions in the discussion draft of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) on the modernisation of patent law of 14 January 2020.

Do Legal Differences Matter? A Comparison of German Patent Law Regimes before 1877

In this article, we give an overview of the differences in German patent legislations between 1815 and 1876. German patent laws differed in particular with regard to the application and approval system, the treatment of foreign applicants, and patent fees. Differences in the former two categories provide an explanation why the number of patents was considerably lower in Prussia than in other states. While the number of Prussian patents per capita almost stagnated between 1840 and 1872, it increased in Baden, Bavaria and Saxony. Formal differences in patent law do not fully explain this pattern, but Prussian patent policy does. The Prussian patent authority set high barriers to get a patent by applying a thorough technical examination and a strict definition of novelty. Furthermore, we show that states using a registration system granted a considerably higher number of patents than states with technical examinations.

KNOWLEDGE BEYOND BORDERS

―Common knowledge‖ refers to information that the average, educated citizen would accept as reliable without checking it up. The ―personal knowledge‖ possessed by any individual, usually accumulated through observation, research or personal experiences. ―Intellectual knowledge‖ is any product of the human intellect that the law protects from unauthorized use by others. Intellectual property is legally protected as patent, copyright or trademark. Knowledge can only skip borders in case of a proper knowledge transfer (KT). KT can be difficult because of different views on explicitness of knowledge, language, geography, generational differences, religions aspects, political influence, competition, economical issues, national and international conflicts, migration, misconceptions, mutual trust, rewards, timeframe, IT capacities, faulty information, motivation issues or communication. Communication can be a boundary. Effective knowledge transfer requires an effective understanding between sender and receiver. Every field of knowledge has its own jargon and special technical terms. To solve ―syntactic boundaries‖, a common lexicon for terms must be developed. Now sender and receiver have to find a common understanding to avoid misinterpretation. Semantic boundaries‖ focus on translating knowledge and to develop common interpretations. ―Pragmatic boundary‖ is the conflict of the different interest for the parties to use knowledge. Knowledge beyond borders has to deal with legal borders, which are national and international regulation and laws. Transferring knowledge without legal protection would lead to unauthorized access or even illegal alteration of knowledge. If a source of knowledge must be afraid to lose control over his intellectual property it could cause a total stop of exchanging of knowledge, especially beyond borders. Therefore protection of intellectual property is the bridge to overcome such borders. Under German law intellectual knowledge is protected by: German Patent Act: A patent is an official right to be the only person or company allowed to make or to sell a new product or a new idea for a certain period of time. A German patent can be obtained through the direct filing of a national patent application with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, through the filing of a European patent application or through the filing of an international application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. The German patent has a term of 20 years. German Trademark Act: A trademark is a recognizable sign or design, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one enterprise from those of other enterprises. A trademark may be established through actual use in the marketplace, or through registration of the mark with the trademarks office. German Copyright Act: Another type of intellectual property is creative works such as paintings, writing, architecture, software, photos, dance and music are protected by the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz). The copyright law protects an author regarding their intellectual and personal relationship to the work and the types of its utilization. A work and the knowledge behind must meet certain minimum criterions to qualify for copyright protection. There a different kinds of copy rights, which are exclusive licences, exploitations rights, non-exclusive and exclusive rights of use. The length of protection also varies depending on when the work was created or first published. The true source of improving human welfare is knowledge without borders. Therefore it is more important than ever to protect the intellectual knowledge to distribute knowledge over national and international borders without harming the source of knowledge, which is at the end the mind of an individual person. As a consequence borders will become bridges.